Strands of Starlight (7 page)

The women had stood, and were huddled together now by the fire, watching silently. “
Ave Maria,
” one said, “
gratia plena, Dominus Tecum
. . .”

“Clare! Drink, please. . . . If we can get your little one out, your womb will close and you'll both live. Clare . . .”

Miriam heard it all from within her small crucible of light and pain. The power had broken free of her spine and had flooded her, streaming through her body, burning terribly, each muscle and nerve and fiber igniting in turn, blazing white-hot.

Too late. She could not stop it. If Clare was, by a miracle, restored, it would fade, but otherwise it would go on and on like this until Miriam herself passed out, screaming, as she had that one day when she had seen the leper in the hills outside Maris. She had no choice but to shriek in agony or submit and be violated once again.

She was sitting on the floor by the pallet. The pool of blood lapped at her scarred legs.

There were footsteps on the path outside, and the door was flung open again. The deep tones of the priest's voice made Miriam shudder, and she dragged herself to hands and knees. “Get him out of here,” she cried. “Get him away!”

“How dare you—”

She could not see his face, could not see anything. She got to her feet and shoved him aside blindly, her outstretched hands groping for the bleeding woman. “Get him away. Mika!”

“Miriam! No!”

She nearly laughed. Mika might as well deny a thunderstorm, or a flood, or a forest fire. She was screaming now, the white fire tearing the sounds from her lips in ragged hunks. Near fainting, she bumped into the edge of the pallet and fell forward onto soft, dropsied, fevered flesh. She smelled the rank odor of old sweat, the ripe stench of growing death. “Get him out of here,” she cried again.

And she let the power have its way with her.

There was a change in the air, a sudden cry, a flash of white light. The world spun. Then the fire faded from her body, and when Miriam came to herself, she heard the wail of a newborn child.

“A girl, Clare,” Mika was saying. “You have a daughter.”

***

“I have to leave,” said Miriam. She was crumpled into a corner of Mika's kitchen like a rag doll that some child had carelessly flung down. There was a dark, metallic taste in her mouth, as if she had bitten a sword blade, and her belly ached, though not from hunger. She watched blankly as Mika put together a cold dinner.

“I know,” said the midwife tiredly. “I know. I saw the priest's face.”

Miriam gave a short, bitter laugh that had no feeling behind it. “At least he didn't pick me up and throw me on the fire then and there. He was almost funny. He looked like a fish, puffing and blowing.”

Mika turned away with a platter of dried fruit and smoked meat. “Why did you do it? You . . . you
knew
the birth would be difficult.”

“Yes.” Miriam stirred from the corner, got up, and cleared a seat for Mika. The two women sat down and Mika said a blessing. Miriam sat with her hands folded. She did not believe in God anymore. She believed in nothing save her power, and she wished that she could deny that also.

“So?” said Mika after they had started to eat.

Absently, Miriam put food into her mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “I'm stupid, I actually started to care about you, Mika. You and your ladies and your babies. When I saw you broken down about Petronella's girl, I couldn't bring myself to stand by and watch it happen again. That's all. I didn't want you to cry again, because I'd feel bad. Selfish as usual. So I helped. So I'll have to leave now. It'll look better for you, too: you can say you put me out when you found out I was a demon . . . or a witch . . . or whatever it is I'm supposed to be. God knows, I can't possibly be human.”

“Don't talk that way.”

“All right. I won't.”

The wind was still blowing strongly. Mika rose, went to the window, and fiddled with the shutter fastening as though envisioning a small, frail healer traveling alone and in such weather. “Where will you go?” she said at last.

“I don't know. I don't particularly care. Certainly not to Hypprux.”

Mika was silent for a time. “What about the Free Towns?”

“Good as anything, I suppose.” Miriam chewed listlessly at a piece of bread. The safety was gone. The drowsy afternoons on Mika's bench were gone. So were the quiet evenings by the fire. The women would not be bringing food anymore, nor the men bowing. It was over.

“I'm serious,” said Mika. “There are . . . stories . . . about the Free Towns.”

“Stories. Of course. The Elves turned a priest into a pig. The mayor of Saint Blaise goes out and dances with Immortals. The village of Saint Brigid floats in the air every Lammas Eve. Sure.”

“Have you ever looked at that cloak you've been wearing?”

Miriam glanced at it. The blazons of the Free Towns and Saint Blaise glistened in the firelight.

“You healed that man in Hypprux,” Mika continued, “and he helped you. He
helped
you. He didn't run away.”

“Up until I healed him, he couldn't. He had a broken ankle.” Still, Miriam was considering. Elves were said to visit Saint Brigid with regularity. She did not know whether or not to believe the stories, but something was going on down in the Free Towns, or else the stories would not have started up.

Her gifts might be tolerated there. Surely the Free Towns could not be any worse than the rest of Adria.

'Let it be the Free Towns, then,” she said. “I'll see if Saint Brigid is interested in burning a healer.”

Mika looked stricken. “Please . . .” Her voice broke. “Please don't say things like that.”

Lifting her head, Miriam saw the tears in the older woman's eyes, realized how deeply Mika would miss her. Her vision blurred and she buried her face in her hands, and Mika came to her and folded her in her arms.

***

She spent the next week preparing to leave. Her legs still ached, but they were essentially healed; and the last scabs had fallen off her hands a week before. Mika sewed an extra gown for her and packaged enough food for several days on the road. Miriam looked at the bundle. “It's a little large for me to carry.”

“Don't worry about the size. You'll be taking Esau.”

“Esau?” The shaggy red pony lived in a small stable at one side of Mika's house, his only task being to draw the cart when it was needed. “I can't take Esau.”

“You need a mount, and I can always prevail upon Baron Paul to supply another horse.” Mika met her eyes. “I can give very little to you. Please take what I can give.”

In the end, Miriam took the pony, and Mika saw her off just at dawn. The bells of Furze were ringing prime, and the weather was clear and cold.

“Follow the road,” said the midwife. “It's in fairly good repair. You might pass a house or two before you get to Saint Brigid, but if you have any problems, mention my name. They all know me. Even the bandits.”

Miriam nodded. She unfastened the green cloak. “I'd better leave this with you. The emblems might cause trouble. They're too easily recognized.”

Mika took the cloak and glanced at the gooseflesh on Miriam's arms. “Wait.” She turned and went into the house.

Miriam looked off toward the forest. She would be traveling around the southern end of Malvern in order to reach Saint Brigid, but she was not overly worried about venturing onto the isolated roads alone: ruffians and thieves avoided Malvern to a large extent, and there was not enough traffic upon the south roads to make brigandry a profitable venture.

Mika returned, a bundle under her arm. She shook it out. It was a thick cloak, sized for a young girl . . . or for a tiny healer woman. “Here,” she said, fastening it about Miriam. “It belonged to my Esther. She never got a chance to wear it, and . . . for some reason, I've kept it. I think . . . I think I kept it for you.”

The cloak was soft and warm. The two women embraced for a long time.

Then the road took Miriam away to the south and west. She knew without looking that Mika was standing in the road, watching after her for many minutes, watching even after she was out of sight.

Departures again. Always departures. There could be no returns. She was a piece of straw blown by the wind, always moving, the wind itself for the most part heedless of her presence. Just so much chaff, she was, to be consigned eventually to the flames.

She winced at the thought.

There were two houses along the way, small steadings surrounded by farmland, but she passed them by without incident. She spent the nights by herself, curled up on a pile of bracken near Esau, the blue cloak wrapped warmly about her. As she dozed off, she wondered what Mika was doing, remembered the warm house she had left, recalled the homely smells of fresh bread and dried herbs.

On the third day, there were signs that a village was ahead: a house or two sheltering in the eaves of the forest that, green and gold with spring, now bordered the road. She saw fields, and a stray cow looked at her with large brown eyes. She estimated that she would reach Saint Brigid by evening.

But toward noon, she heard a groan of pain from the forest, and she reined in her pony. White flame flickered along her spine. The sound had not come from very far away, no doubt just from the other side of the first ranks of trees. Prudence told her to go on, that the village was near, but prudence was fighting against the power, and there was no contest.

She bent her head for a moment. Another groan. The heat rose. “All right. All right. I'm coming,” she muttered bitterly. She dismounted and took Esau's bridle in her hand.

About ten yards into the trees, she came upon an unconscious man, his arm nearly torn off at the shoulder. From the look of his other wounds, she judged that he had been mauled by a bear. The fellow, though, looked as though he would have been a match for any bear: he was huge, dressed in hunter's garments of leather, strongly muscled, deeply tanned. But his hands were not those of a laboring man, and his weapons had a well-used look.

Blood was pouring from the stump of his arm, and Miriam's spine turned into molten iron. Dizzy, she let Esau's bridle fall and staggered forward. Kneeling beside the stranger, she took out her eating knife and cut away cloth and leather so that she could touch the wounds. He was badly hurt in other ways—ribs crushed, flesh cut and mangled by the bear's claws—but the arm was killing him. She felt the power rising, felt the familiar haze of heat and light.

“I don't want this,” she murmured, but the power was forcing her, taking her against her will once again. Sucking in a breath, she seized shoulder and arm and brought them together.

Then she was conscious only of the torrent of fire that ran through her being, and haw clenched to keep back the scream, she let the power that was her master do as it would.

Afterward, she sat back on her heels, drained, blinking at the trees, her thoughts scattered until called together by the movements of the man she had healed.

Huge, unwashed, his garments caked with dirt, he looked the proper ruffian. Only his hands did not conform to the role. He pulled himself up, touched his restored arm, and stared at her. “And who are you, my pretty maid?” he said.

Miriam was mildly surprised: his accent was that of the northern part of the country. But she felt uneasy, too. “A traveler,” she said. “I healed you just now.”

“Oh?” He laughed. “Did I have need of healing?”

“Your arm was torn off,” she said abruptly. “Next time, pick on a smaller bear.” She got up and turned to take up Esau's bridle.

She was seized roughly from behind. She tried to whirl around to beat him off, to grab for her knife, but she was tiny, untrained in fighting, and he was a large man, a match for a bear. One, two cuffs from his massive hands and her senses were reeling.

He was tearing at her clothes now, the clasp of her cloak giving way suddenly and her gown ripping free at the shoulder and down the side. Her anger erupted, as white-hot as her power. Even the Inquisition had not treated her so. Then men in Hypprux had been too frightened.

Not so this stranger. He smacked her again to loosen her thighs, and before she slid into unconsciousness, she felt the pain as she was forced.

The pain drove Miriam to her senses in the late afternoon. She was lying faceup among the trees, and the leaves and spring flowers fluttered quietly and incongruously in the breeze. She focused on them, tried to ignore the fire in her groin, and managed to pull herself to her feet without crying aloud.

My name is Miriam. I have black hair.

She was alone save for Esau. Dark blood was streaking down her thighs, and she could sense that it was not going to stop on its own. She wished she could heal herself.

I have black eyes. . . .

She stumbled to her ripped garments and knotted them clumsily about herself. Esau's brown eyes stared into hers as though he understood her plight, and he crouched slightly as she pulled herself onto his back and collapsed across the saddle, one foot finding a purchase in a stirrup.

My name is Miriam. . . .

“The road, Esau,” she whispered, patting his rump.

He picked his way through the trees, and when he reached the road, she set him on a course toward the village she knew was ahead. She tried to stay conscious, but the vertigo made it difficult to judge whether or not she was succeeding.

The pain hammered through her body, and her face throbbed where it had been struck, but she would not weep. She would not cry anymore. The Church had persecuted her, her power had violated her, and now on top of those rapes was piled yet another, and the outrage fused with the pent-up anger of eight years of running, eight years of hiding.

She was going to find the man who had raped her. She could not touch the Church, she could not stifle her power or the persecutions it brought upon her, but she could deal with
him
. He was going to suffer and die. She held on to that thought, saving the rage, gathering the hate, storing them away for the future.

I have black hair. . . .